At Windham Country Club, we have a golf academy that serves the needs of all golfers, from highly-skilled players to beginners just learning the ropes. I use a variety of innovative teaching technology that aids in helping our students play better golf. With TrackMan, Foresight Sports GCQuad, K-Vest, FlightScope, V1 Video, Blast Motion and the Dynamic Balance System, we engage our students year-round and even offer leagues in our indoor studio during the cold New England winters. We offer a variety of Saturday Specialty Clinics that dive deep into the topic at hand. From full swing tune-ups to distance control with the wedges, hitting from the rough to ensuring a complete bag of clubs, our player development programs cover all aspects of the game in a specific and detailed manner. We keep them conveniently short at one hour and very affordable at $35 so the primary barriers to learning the game of golf, time and money, are less of an issue. With 21 different sessions from April to September, students who want to better their skills have every opportunity to do so. These sessions are suitable for virtually any caliber of player and demographic. We also offer classes that are more focused on their participants, like Senior Swing and Senior Masters Program, one a series of clinics for seniors that improves their skills by offering drills to practice, and the other a clinic and 9-hole on-course experience that even includes lunch, so we can discuss and recap our time together. Boot camps are also a great way for golfers to tune up their game in a more extensive half-day group session. With a great mix of coaching and competition, golfers get the most out of this condensed timeframe. Junior golf is also huge at Windham CC, with those year-round sessions I mentioned, junior camps and PGA Jr. League. Most of our junior golfers also compete in U.S. Kids or New England PGA Junior Tour events.

Coming from a private club, I’m used to having a captive audience – members, kids of members and even grandchildren of members, etc. At a public facility such as ours, we strive to attract players of all walks of life and retain them for the long term by offering something for everyone and an array of great options to play, practice and improve. Implementing programs that have a beginning, a middle and an ultimate goal, has proven effective in retention and long-term improvement of our players. Cross-selling individuals into different programs adds diversity to their experience and provides a continued curriculum. After all, as PGA and LPGA Professionals, we know that the learning in this game never ends. It is important to always have the next step for golfers, as they’ll look back when they were green and realize just how far you’ve taken them in their game improvement.

If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email k2golfpro@gmail.com.